Skewed Reality

I wake up every weekend day at noon - regardless of how early or late I slept the night before - without fail. As if all the fatigue accumulated during the week days only start to take effect during the weekends. So I make up for the lost rest I needed during the weekdays.

But despite sleeping for long hours, I don't sleep well. Concepts of XML, parent-child relationships (database tables), hierarchy nodes, data structures, play around in my mind even as I sleep.

Imagine dreaming. Then imagine designing and problem solving a computer system. Imagine your brain doing all of that at the same time. Its almost like having a fever, the kind that makes you think/imagine crazy things as you sleep. Like how to take over the world of tooth-fairies using mathematics.

Except that with a fever, once you wake up, you realise the absurdity of the ideas you had in your mental spiel, and forget all about it.

Waking up from a dream (or nightmare) of systems design is like waking up with a hangover; the effect lingers in your head. It doesn't make you feel dizzy. It doesn't make you feel nauseous. But you start to see everything. . . . . .differently. You start to look at things, but you don't see it for what it is. You don't "know" (in a loose definition of the word) what the heck it is you're looking at. Almost as if your mind had split into two. And whatever you perceive goes into these two minds to be processed, and you end up with a jumbled up interpretation. You end up living in something of a virtual reality. Like "the Matrix". But its not virtual; its real. You're just reading the world differently; looking at it through a filter - a filter of rules, data structures, their attributes, and their relationships, all of which cannot fully represent any real world entities.

You end up living in a skewed reality, and you hope to high heaven, that the filter isn't permanent.

Talk the talk

Before getting a job, I never really understood why ordinary people don't "understand" IT people. The language they speak. The thought processes that goes on in their head. The way they analyze and solve problems.

Now, having been exposed to the world of SAP for 2 years, I'm beginning to see why. I've been involved in discussions, that in retrospect, wouldn't have made any sense at all - AT ALL - to an outsider. Looking back, I'm actually amazed that I managed to keep up; never mind been able to present my own ideas.

Heck, its like suddenly realizing you can speak in tongues, and whats more, be able to sing Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" in it as well!

I mean, how many acronyms can you stuff into one sentence?! Consider the following:

Guy 1 - "So we want to create an FM and make it RFC enabled, so that it can generate the XML dynamically, which will of course be called within the BSP, eliminating the need for us to use a WSDL instead.

Guy 2 - "Right, but we probably want to compress the Extended Markup Language code to keep the size to a minimum right?

Guy 1 - (Laughs hysterically). "You must be new. Use more tech-speak next time, ok?"

Guy 2 - "ROFLMAO. NP. 1337 5P3AK FTW!"

Weirdos. Oh wait, I'm writing this damn entry, aren't I?

Life and the line of duty

Ever met people in the working class who bragged about how long or how hard they work? "I've worked over 2 days without sleep" or "I've worked until I actually blacked out when I stood up to get to the toilet". The way these people go on, its as if they were having a competition about who suffered worst because of their jobs.

Why, oh why do they brag about it? Do they actually think its something to be proud of? You know what it translates to when someone brags to me about how long/hard they worked: "I've spent some precious time in my life doing something that does not contribute to how I would like to remember my life to be, PLUS it will shorten my already short lifespan as well".

I've suffered because of work, so I know what its like. I know what its like, to work weekends. I know what its like, to do 3 men's work at once. I know what its like, to work across 24 hours. I know what its like, to be awakened in the middle of the night, because "an issue" has arose. I know what its like. And I was never ever PROUD nor do I BRAG, that I experienced any of the above. I find it pathetic that I spent most of my waking hours working instead of living. Suffering because of work is not an achievement; it is a bloody tragedy.

Sure, you may not have a choice and it might be your responsibility to do it, fine. Just don't come out and say, with your nose in the air, "its dedication". Don't come out and tell the whole world like its some sort of achievement that's worthy of a medal and a statue erected in your honor. To me, that is akin to slashing yourself in the wrist "for the betterment of the company" and expecting a pat on the back for a job well done.

I know what its like to work like hell. And its pathetic.